BEST OF BRITISH: McLaren Technology Centre

Welcome to the future, where automotive legends are made. Looming out of the verdant English countryside like a top-secret quantum mechanics laboratory from a big-budget feature film, the McLaren Technology Centre (MTC) is an unlikely automotive hub.

Side by side with motoring.com.au's British agent provocateur, John Mahoney, I navigate the vast driveway that circumnavigates McLaren's high-tech hub in Woking, UK. It's fascinating how effective the simplest of planning devices can be, by compelling visitors to eye off the architecturally striking building from the other side of a man-made lake. The colossal glass structure that is McLaren's global nerve centre is more Bond villain’s lair than exotic road car and F1 incubator.

"What is this place?" I ask out aloud as we pull up outside the breathtaking edifice.

"Narnia," mouths John, as we step through the precipice and into the main reception area, which doubles as a history lesson, littered with championship-winning F1 race cars.

We're drawn to the ultra-neat reception desk. Before we can say a word the lady behind the desk pipes up: "Mr Mahoney, Mr Torr, please wait one moment..."

Expecting Tony Stark to swagger over at any minute, we're instead met by Amanda McLaren, daughter of Bruce McLaren, the New Zealand racer and inventor who founded the brand.

Although she doesn't appear to have a flying robot suit that shoots lasers from its molybdenum gauntlets, Amanda McLaren has just as much charm and proves to be an excellent guide, graciously spending the day taking us through the MTC and the adjoining McLaren Production Centre (MPC), the latter where the brand’s road cars are hand-built.

It's all top-secret, nothing to see here!

The camera crew rocks up a few minutes later and they're clearly just as gob-smacked. But elation is replaced with anguish as we're politely informed by McLaren PR staff that there's only limited (very) opportunity to shoot within the MTC. Pretty much where we stand…

And nowhere else!

The vision you can see in our video is stock footage and exposes little of the technical magnificence that adds greatly to the McLaren story. Clearly the company has been burned before, with leaked images of upcoming models originating from previous media tours. There's always one who ruins it for everyone.

That the MPC is completely off limits to our camera crew is a tragedy because I can tell you it's a mesmerising, futuristic techno-hangout unlike anything else in the industry.

Take for example the lifts. Circular in form and pneumatic in operation, Amanda McLaren explains that an innovative solution was required because the parkland setting restricted the building's height.

"The building is constrained to 11 metres high, so you can't put a conventional lift pulley system on the roof. So what better way to drive your lifts than having them look like a piston from a car engine?" she explains.

"And that's why we have underground areas too," she chuckled, as if the company is indeed working on some sort of new superweapon deep below the lake.

But as it turns out the lake is far from merely decorative. After the Queen (of England, not McLaren) presided over the opening of the MTC in May 2004, the lake's purpose was demonstrated, as Amanda McLaren describes.

"We have a wind tunnel, it draws quite a few megawatts of electricity off the national grid when it's started up. And that amount of energy creates a lot of heat. So the beautiful lake out the front is not just ornamental, it's the cooling system for that facility."

"When it's running, the water cascades through this area out here [she points towards the wind tunnel] and the returning aerated water actually reduces the amount of algae in the lake."

Indeed, the attention to detail lavished on the MTC is staggering and the ingeniousness that the architectural firm, Foster and Partners, built into the site ensures it will continue to mesmerise for decades to come.

Do they even build cars here?

As we continue to tour the MTC, we have a brief sticky beak at the F1 area and it's full of carbon car bits that are worth their weight in gold. Actually they're worth more than gold.

Then I spot a sign that reads "McLaren Applied Technology" and quiz Amanda on the subject.

Long story short, McLaren attracts not just some of the brightest engineering minds in Europe, but scientific types too, and they have a collaboration with GSK or GlaxoSmithKline, a British pharmaceutical company with a net worth of about $110 billion.

So the robot suit is still a goer then?

Not quite.

"One of the areas that's borne fruit [for McLaren Applied Technology] is transportation. They work with Heathrow airport, looking at aircraft movement. Applying the time and motion principles used in [F1] pit stops, we've increased the number of planes in and out of Heathrow airport."

And before we get to the car stuff – which is just as fascinating – there's one more stop, arguably the most important for yours truly. No, not the employee swimming pool, the restaurant, dubbed Absolute Taste.

With views over the lake that evokes a "blimey" out of Mahoney, the eatery not only serves top-spec tucker, the atmosphere within the restaurant is negatively pressurised. Why? Simple – so the tantalising smells from the kitchen don't waft out throughout the facility, ensuring workers don't become distracted.

It's much as Amanda McLaren explained in her captivating video interview for Best of British, where a clean and tidy workplace usually results in improved perceptive productivity.

Can we build some cars now?

Eight years after the gobsmacking MTC was built, the McLaren Production Centre (MPC) came to be in 2011, allowing the company to ramp up its hand-built road cars.

"As production numbers increased we outgrew that area (MTC) where the MP4-12C was first built," says McLaren.

And although both facilities are separate, they're joined by a very long, very Stark underground corridor than feels like a beautifully preserved set from the classic sci-fi film, 2001: a Space Odyssey.

Eventually we come to what looks like a dead-end but McLaren knows where the hidden door is and simply pushes on one of the flush-fit wall panels which opens up to a viewing platform over the production area.

It really is a tragedy we can't show you this stuff. Nor make awesome jokes about which OCD-inspired secret door Ron Dennis was ushered out of after the board of directors had had enough.

Clean, white, and somewhat clinical in appearance, the factory floor is abuzz with movement, from cars having their seals tested in the "monsoon machine" to workers installing seats, wiring in dashboards and generally looking rather elegant as they push around silent trolleys full of components.

And as we're talking about some of the other factories we've visited (McLaren was the last stop on our Best of British tour), we mention our visit to Rolls-Royce's Goodwood facility and how amazing it is.

Amanda McLaren responds: "Rolls-Royce makes its cars by hand, but they use a robot to paint. We make our cars by hand, but we paint by hand too. We believe the human eye can see things and pay attention to detail that a robot can't."

Depending on colour and finish, it takes around three days to paint each car. Some take longer than others.

McLaren later confesses there is another robot in situ, but it has nothing to with assembling the cars.

"It's a coordinate measuring machine that measures down to a tolerance of 50 microns. Attention to detail at McLaren is something we really pride ourselves on."

Every process is perfection personified

McLaren builds incredibly powerful, incredibly agile cars that push the boundaries of performance, and to create such highly-strung machines requires levels of precision that would make an OCD-sufferers eyes water.

Every wire that's attached, every panel that's adhered and every nut and bolt that fastened on each and every car is measured and recorded. As a car moves between each station, it has a unique serial number allows it to "log on" explains Mrs McLaren.

"Each station records the car, whose working on it, and what's being done to the car.

“We know how much torque is used to tighten fittings. So while it's artisanal hand-crafting at its best, it's supported by technology in the background to capture the data. This ensure high levels of build [quality] and safety."

We watch, mouths agape, as the cars glide between stations, workers smoothly applying their skills with each process.

And if a new model comes into being, such as the impending 570S Spider, new engineering measures are easily added.

"All the wiring and hoses and everything is already laid under foot. You just cut a tile out and pull the wiring through and set up a new station," says McLaren.

"As we increase models and variants and numbers, we are moving things around a wee bit, but absolutely this is a flexible factory. It's an attention to detail thing -- even in the design of this facility and thinking forward to what we may need in future," she adds.

"It's not what people expect when they see a car production facility," he says, almost as an aside.

The numbers game

In 2015 McLaren Automotive built 1654 cars. In 2016 that number will essentially double to around 3000 vehicles, with roughly 10 cars rolling out of the fancy-pants MPC every day.

The major boost to volume has occurred following the release of the Sport Series vehicles, which include the McLaren 570S and McLaren 570GT.

Priced from around $400,000 each, the Sport Series vehicles are the the Woking company’s "affordable" entry-level supercars.

The mid-level Super Series like the 650S and top-end Ultimate Series cars (think P1) have given the company the kind of product line-up that make it a global contender in the supercar world.

Although McLaren Automotive trusts its 3.8-litre twin-turbo engines and dual-clutch automatic gearboxes to be built by racecar supplier Riccardo, the company says it was heavily involved and fundamentally "contributed to their manufacturing process".

And as Mrs McLaren affirms, "I wouldn’t work here if I didn’t think my dad would approve of the cars."

Like chocolate

The tour concluded, we walk back through the shiny white-walled corridor that connects the MPC and MTC, which cuts underneath a service road.

"Low volume, hand built, attention to detail," muses McLaren about the cars built here.

"And if you take his [Bruce McLaren’s] original prototype road car and compare it with these, take out the computer tech and it's a similar philosophy."

And then it's eerily quiet.

Amanda, John and I each contemplating what was seen and discussed during the long walk through what could pass as a hospital from the far flung future. But the silence is not awkward. Far from it – we're all smiling.

The always jovial Amanda McLaren cuts the silence.

"A lot of people think this is like Willy Wonker and the Chocolate Factory."

For a petrolhead chocoholic like me, it comes very close.